Paving The Way

When Henry Ford revolution-ized the concept of the
as-sembly line at the beginning of this century, who would have guessed that at the close
of the century we would be in an era where human assembly line workers would have been
largely replaced by automation. The manufacturing industry has greatly evolved from one of
high labour-low output to low labour-high output strategies of today. What has caused this
fundamental change?



Increased consumer demand for goods and services has forced companies to adapt new
strategies and processes. The objective is to get products to the market faster than the
competition. To compound this insatiable appetite for products, companies have had to
adopt strategies that would allow them to succeed in providing the most diverse product
portfolio to the market, at the lowest time-to-market possible, and at the lowest possible
cost per unit. Information technology (IT) has enabled companies to do this.



Maximizing profits

With the increased application of advanced IT solutions to almost every aspect of the
manufacturing industry, companies have been able to feed the hungry consumer appetite for
goods and vice versa. As consumer demand grows, it greatly impacts on the ability of
companies to effectively and efficiently introduce products to the marketplace. As product
cycles and portfolios continue to rise, companies must find ways to maximize output and
profits.



IT has greatly changed the manufacturing industry. New manufacturing concepts based on
IT-Material Resource Planning (MRP), Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), Just-In-Time
(JIT) and Zero Defect Manufacturing (ZDM)-have emerged in the past three decades in the
hope of building more profitable enterprises.



While these concepts changed the way manufacturers dealt with operational processes, real
technologies crept into the shop floor, changing every stage of the manufacturing
operations to reduce the 'human-drudgery factor.' Robotics and embedded chips were
introduced into the production line, enabling the man-operated machines of yesteryear to
evolve into industrial computers.

Company stakeholders are demanding that advanced automation strategies should translate
into significant cost savings in terms of inventory, quality, shortened cycle-time and
wastage. They also argue that advanced automation should make production lines a lot more
flexible, allowing efficient mixed-mode assembly and 'make-to-order' processes.



These demands have given way to a whole new concept called flow manufacturing.



Imparting efficiency

Flow manufacturing is a total business strategy that addresses the diverse functions of
the enterprise such as product engineering, demand management, shop floor design,
production line scheduling, material replenishment and supply chain management. It
provides a set of processes and techniques to help streamline these activities, which when
applied within the framework of the 'flow' philosophy, can help customers lower costs and
increase market competitiveness.



The primary objective of flow manufacturing is to produce the highest quality product at
the lowest possible cost, in the shortest possible time. Flow techniques enable a more
customer-responsive environment through reduction of product cycle time, and also lowers
product costs by minimizing inventories. Quality is enhanced by the implementation of
total quality management as part of the production process.



Flow manufacturing differs significantly from traditional manufacturing methods. Flow
manufacturing is a JIT system where the product is 'pulled' through the assembly line
rather than 'pushed'-products are manufactured according to actual orders rather than
produced according to sales projections. It does not use work orders or traditional
routing strategies. Nor does it necessitate MRP, except for long-term needs and
maintaining vendor relationships. Flow manufacturing does not need capacity-requirements
planning since it is based on the concept of a balanced production line.



Driven by sales orders and starting at the point of final assembly, flow manufacturing
means that products flow through the assemble line, one unit at a time, at a constant
rate, in what is termed 'TAKT-time' or 'drumbeat.' Moving products through the entire
production process at a steady rate dramatically cuts down costs associated with the queue
time-which accounts for up to 90% of the manufacturing cycle time. There are no
sub-assemblies because feeder lines deliver components to specific points in the assembly
process, driven by Kanban replenishment techniques.



Flow manufacturing enables mixed-model manufacturing, which is the ability to make any
item at any time, with different variations of a single product-the exact opposite of the
assembly lines of Ford's day. Flow techniques offer the flexibility of mass customization,
with the efficiency of the classic assembly line.